How Harry Found His Groove
by wintergreen825
Summary: After the final battle, Harry Potter runs away with Luna Lovegood.


**Legal Disclaimer:** I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

**Warning:** This work may be offensive to some readers. Feel free to back out if that's you.

**Author's Note:** So…I may have watched the movie _Sabrina_ recently and I found myself needing to write a story about Harry needing to leave to find himself. This turned out a lot _softer_ than I had anticipated, but I guess that's what Harry needed from this journey. Of note to any judges reading this, I use the headcanon that the Potters are Desi (of Indian descent) and I expand out the autistic traits that both Luna and Harry display in canon. (Even if JKR will never admit it unless it gains her PR points, both those characters come across as very autistic in the canon, at least to another autistic.)

**Dedication:** If you like the concept of this story, check out my teammate Trish (starspangledpumpkin) who has another Luna drags Harry (and George, this time) on a road trip to find himself. Hers is less "Sabrina in Paris Montage" and more "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again", so be prepared to laugh. She also adds to hers occasionally, which is something that I'm not planning.

**Submitting Info:**  
**Stacked with:** Houses Competition (Term 4); Hogwarts (Term 10); MC4A (SpBingo; Star; T3; FPC)  
**Individual Challenges:** Gryffindor MC (N); Ravenclaw MC (N); Summer Vacation (?); Ethnic & Present (N); Neurodivergent (N); Quiet Time (Y); Long Haul (?); Click Bait It (?); Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux (N)  
**House:** Hufflepuff  
**Role:** Player (7th Year)  
**Category:** Standard  
**Prompt:** Traveling the World (Theme)  
**Assignment No.:** Term 10 – Assignment 6  
**Subject (Task No.):** Biosciences (Task 1: Write about someone who's been in one place in life for a long time); Smut (Or Not, As It Were) [8 – Throb]; 365 Words [288 – Drown]; Insane Prompt Challenge [185 – Escape (Theme)]  
**Space Address (Prompt):** 3A (Renewal)  
**Representation(s):** Luna Lovegood; Local Attractions; Autistic Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter  
**Bonus Challenges: **Not a Lamp; Ladylike (Possessive); Wabi Sabi; Odd Feathers  
**Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** T3 (Terrarium)  
**Word Count:** 1887

(^^)  
**How Harry Found His Groove**  
(^^)

Luna found him after the final battle, after they had rested and begun to wearily begin the process of dealing with the aftermath of a war which should have never been. Harry had been staring out the window of the Astronomy Tower, watching as the Black Lake turned to burnished gold with the reflection of the setting sun. He didn't turn to look at her as she came up next to him, comfortable in the knowledge that Luna wouldn't be upset about that. She stood close beside him but didn't press up against him like Ginny or Hermione would have.

She would never disregard his personal boundaries like that, and after all the turmoil of the last forty-eight hours, Harry needed that more than he could have verbalized. He needed the room to breathe, as already the wizarding world was turning to him to fix the mess that ousting Voldemort had left. He had died for them and not even a full day later, they were wanting more. All except Andromeda, who wanted to raise Teddy herself, opposed to making Harry raise the infant when he was not even eighteen.

Harry just wanted to rest.

"Have you ever been to Paris?" Luna asked suddenly.

Her tone was flat and airy, betraying just how exhausted she must be as she had been getting better about controlling it to better sound present. Learning how to better fake normal conversation tones had helped getting their other friends to accept the blonde into their circle. Then again, maybe she wasn't trying to pretend now because it was just them, and he knew the act for what it was. He shook his head to clear the drifting thoughts as well as answer Luna's question.

"I hear it's nice in the late spring," she continued, not pressing him for a verbal answer. He could have kissed her for that respite, small as it seemed on the surface. "There's a park where anyone can just walk up to a podium and give a speech, on any topic they feel like, without legal repercussions. That's supposed to be enforced by magic. Daddy had always meant to go there one day and lecture on the plight of the Dirigible Plum."

Harry reached towards her, still without turning away from the setting sun. Only then did Luna move closer, tucking herself into the comfort of his one-armed hug. He sighed into the sensation of being touched, wonderful even as his sense-memory screamed about the potential danger of having someone so close to him. Luna didn't take the tension running through him as a sign to move away; she just waited out his instincts, understanding that it was a reaction that he couldn't help. Only when he had finally relaxed against her did she continue speaking, letting her words fill the silence that he couldn't seem to break.

"Daddy always wanted me to see my mother's homeland as well. We were going to go the summer after my last year of Hogwarts. I think your parents would have done the same."

He hummed in acknowledgement as he angled his body towards hers, laying his head easily on her shoulder. It was bony from her time in captivity and her clothes were the same ones she had worn into the battle yesterday, but the gentle scent of wisteria and plum still rose from her skin. The smell and warmth reminded him of the many hours they had spent in similar positions over the years, secretly stolen under the cover of darkness or in snatches of time that Harry had to take in the same manner that the drowning struggled for breath.

He didn't want to wear the mask that he had crafted while living with the Dursleys. Pretending to be normal had always been an exhausting lie to maintain, and he was _so tired_. Her fingers carded carefully through his hair. It had grown out while he had been on the run and now it curled jaggedly around his chin and shoulders. He didn't want to think about how the younger version of Sirius that the Stone had brought forth had worn his hair just a little longer. He didn't want to think about how his father, both older than any picture Harry had ever seen but shockingly close to his own age at the same time, had casually mentioned that he had never thought of adding length to tame the wild locks.

Why did all his memories of his parents have to hurt so much?

"We could still go," Luna whispered, adding a few scratches against his scalp. "We could just go to Paris, to Greece, to India. We've done our parts, and we deserve to heal and mourn, just the same as anyone else. We deserve to rest." Gently pulling on a handful of hair while cupping his chin with the other hand, she raised his face to touch their foreheads together. Her breath fanned over his lips and he felt something within him settle, like she was breathing life back into him. "Will you run away with me, Harry Potter?"

Harry nodded, and then let her magic take them both away from Hogwarts and its fallen wards.

(^^)

Paris was beautiful in the spring. Luna arranged for them to stay in a little apartment in the Montmartre district. It overlooked the remains of the infamous Moulin Rouge, now more of a tourist destination rather than a cabaret. The bright red of it stood out even among the other brilliant colors of the district. All around them was artists of assorted kinds.

No one thought twice about anything they did that could have been considered _odd_ or _abnormal_. Luna wore exactly the same thing she had always worn when her Hogwarts uniform wasn't required: peasant skirts and poet-shirts in many hues. After a few days, Harry had an equally eccentric wardrobe to match. It was wonderful having clothes that were just his and not dedicated to school.

They stayed through the summer. Luna painstakingly taught him French, being patient in a way that Hermione would never have managed. Harry also picked up sketching, finding pleasure in the soft scratch of pencil on paper. They visited the Louvre, and Harry fell in love with the artwork of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras. Luna insisted on taking walks in all of the cemeteries, and Harry discovered a peace that he hadn't realized had been missing.

The only part of the magical world they visited during the months they spent there was the tiny speaking park that Luna had mentioned Xenophilius had wanted to visit. They strolled through the podiums with their arms hooked together, occasionally listening to a particular speaker that had caught their attention. Harry loved how none of them let fear or apathy silence them against bigotry. It would have been nice to have something like that back home. The pain associated with the war was starting to lessen to a steady throb.

By the time they had arrived on the shores of the little Greek isle where Luna's mother had been raised, Harry's hair reached the bottom of his shoulder blades. Luna loved to practice braiding it with increasingly complicated patterns. The island had a vining flower that was similar to wisteria that quickly became Luna's favorite additive to the braids. Harry loved how people tended to leave him alone whenever she had recently done his hair. Otherwise they seemed to constantly be wanting him to do things with them, like going dancing or drinking, or they would be constantly touching his arms or shoulders.

But that all stopped when Luna added the not-wisteria to his hair. Harry preferred being followed by sighs over having people constantly leaning into his space and laughing.

Otherwise, their time in Greece was mostly spent on the beach or the sea. Harry's already brown skin darkened from all the time in the sun, and even Luna got a nice golden tone to her pale skin. Swimming in the sea was more pleasant than swimming in the Black Lake or trying not to drown in the ocean at the foot of a cliff. With Luna's help, he picked up the skill easily, reveling in the way his muscles moved as he stroked his way through the water. It reminded him of the dreams he used to have about flying, before he had gone to Hogwarts and experienced a different kind of flying.

They visited Mount Delphi on Sirius' birthday. The lake created by the pooling waters of the sacred spring reflected the full moon, especially with how still it was without even a breeze to disturb it. Luna held him as he finally cried for the man who could have raised him and the life they could have had. She didn't speak or try to calm him. She just held him as he mourned as he had never had a chance to do.

Afterwards, they drank from the spring and feasted on the fruit and cheese they had packed.

They pressed farther east, taking a train into the Punjab region of India. By this point, Harry was not surprised to discover that Luna knew Hindi, even if it was a dialect more common in the southern regions of the country. It gave them both a base to start learning the local dialect as they searched for any Potter relatives left in the area. Sadly, they never did find any.

Harry fell in love with curry. The Dursleys had never allowed the food in the house. It wasn't British enough for them. But from his first bite, it was like rediscovering home. Despite his worries, it wasn't overwhelmingly spicy. For the first time in his life, Harry found himself actually _wanting_ to eat for a reason other than hunger. He didn't even miss the flavor of meat and cheese that had been so common in dishes up until this point in his life.

They got invited to a wedding while they were there. Their neighbor's daughter was marrying the son of a baker from a village up the nearby mountain. The henna turned a dark red on Luna's golden skin, which drew the attention of many men attending the wedding. Harry didn't like how they started acting like the young women and men had towards Harry back in Greece, but he had no equivalent of the flowers that Luna had woven into his hair. He settled for sticking close by her side during the celebrations.

Their year-long trip ended much the same way it had begun. The only difference was instead of the Astronomy Tower of Hogwarts, they were on the grounds of a monastery in Nepal watching the day break. Fog blanketed the valley below them, thinning slowly as the sun rose in the sky. The sight made Harry's breath catch in his throat with how light gilded everything in perfect gold. At the edge of his mind, he could _almost_ hear a sound like a phoenix singing.

It rejuvenated him just as much as this year away had.

"Are you ready to go home?" Luna asked, barely audible over the birds awakening around them. Harry nodded and reached for her hand. Her magic wrapped around them both with a gentle strength that was so recognizably Luna.

Then the courtyard was empty.


End file.
